Monday, September 20, 2010

Monday Update of the Plastic Beads

Well, it's Monday, and as promised, here is my first official Monday update!

The past couple of weeks I've been taking my beads, pendants, and figurines to Farmer's Market, mostly to help fill the void on our table caused by the rough summer weather and dwindling garden. I noticed that there's a lot of kids at market desperately looking for something to buy, but their handfuls of quarters weren't enough to afford anything I made. So, that in mind, I stopped by the store on the way home from market and picked up some plastic beads, elastic cord, and a new pair of scissors. (The other two pairs of scissors I'd been using had been in my family since 1995 and were not snipping the way they used to.) Since Thursday night, I've been having a blast with--of all things--plastic beads! I haven't counted for a couple of days, but I probably have close to 100 children's bracelets constructed by now, and I even made a nifty displace box for them using an old beerflat and some colorful cardstock. Will I make my money back from this endeavor? Probably not at our local farmer's market, but to my surprise, I've gotten some interest in what I've been doing online, and I may start offering packets of children's jewelry on Etsy soon.

The bracelets in their customp-made display box.

A selection of some of my finished bracelets

On a non-arts-and-crafts-note, I have to vent.

The other night, while the hubby and I were watching a movie, we heard barking outside our front door. Normally that means my neighbors have turned their menace of a dog loose and she has one of the cats cornered on the front porch, but when I went outside, I found a dog I'd never seen before tangled up in our rose bushes.

The poor dog was on one of those heavy-duty tie-outs, and had apparently gotten loose from whatever the tie-out had been clipped to. The clip on the tie-out had gotten wedged between the bricks of our rosebed and in his efforts to get free from it, he'd wrapped the rope several times around the rosebush. Here's where I get mad. The rope was not clipped to the collar. It was TIED. For those of you familiar with those heavy-duty tie-out ropes, you know how hard it would be to tie one of those things in a knot, let alone untie it. This means the dog was chained up outside 24/7, probably with little if any human contact.

Now, I am not the kind of person to tell another person what kind of pets they should or should not have, but it grates my cheese so bad when I see these people who buy dogs and then NEVER interact with them. Dogs are not lawn ornaments. They are not decoration. They are living, breathing, SOCIAL animals, and they need social interaction as much as we do. I cannot understand the mentality of taking on the financial burden of a pet if you're not going to use it as a companion or working animal. What is the point of buying a dog, chaining it up, and feeding and watering it until it runs away or dies? Beyond just the cruelty of depriving a social animal of social contact, where is the logic in this? And WHY is this behavior so prevalent out here? Is it a status symbol to have as many yapping dogs in your front yard as possible? Does it make you the top of the Redneck heap if you have four neglected dogs tied to your trees instead of two?

Well, I freed the beautiful dog that was trapped in my rosebush, and he made a beeline for home. I suppose dogs are nothing if not loyal. The next morning I unwrapped the rope (cord? chain?) from the rosebush and got a closer look at it, and my irritation just got worse. This thing had been broken several times and tied back together. Seriously? Are this dog's owners so poorly off that they can't get a new chain? I'm a starving artist and I still found the money to get my dog a decent chain! If they can't afford a new tie out when the old one breaks (four times), they shouldn't have a dog, because clearly the responsibility and financial burden is too much for them.

Anyways, I just had to get that out of my system. Until next time, avid readers!